The term East Baltic race was coined by the anthropologist Rolf Nordenstreng, but was popularised by the race theorist Hans F. K. Günther. This race were living in Finland, Estonia and north-western Russia. It was characterized as "short-headed, broad-faced, with heavy, massive under-jaw, chin not prominent, flat, rather broad, short nose with low bridge; stiff, light (ash-blond) hair; light (grey or whitish blue) eyes, standing out; light skin with a greyish undertone.[3]

The Nazi philologist Josef Nadler declared the East Baltic race to be the main source of German Romanticism.[5][6] Also in the Third Reich the philologist Julius Petersen wrote that Ludwig Tieck's Romanticism might have been promoted by his possible Slavic heritage, referring to the American biographer Edwin H. Zeydel's theory, that Tieck's grandmother was Russian.[7]